Incommensurability and Paradigm Crossing: Folding the EGs Back into the Omelet or Blood in the Water? ☆

Abstract

The Empirical Generalists (EGs) suggest that the accepted focus on segmentation and loyalty in Marketing Management is irrelevant and that the Dirichlet equation and Double Jeopardy provide the only useful theory of consumer behavior. Meanwhile the Segmentationalists adhere to a Marketing Management model and blithely ignore their claims. This discussion examines the extremes of a continuum which extends from the breadth of Kotler (1967) to the reductive analysis of Sharp (2010). Lowe et al., (2004) have provided an easily understood set of categories that describes these paradigmatic differences. This is applied along with an integrative framework adapted from Rossiter, (2012) which suggests remedial linkages. However recent work by the Empirical Generalists suggests that this is flogging a dead horse. The response from Marketing Management adherents has been a refusal to engage and a denial of oxygen to the debate. The implications for marketing strategy are considerable since the continued utility of the key technique of segmentation is under challenge. Will it survive as a valid technique for addressing the market or will it be reduced to a mere description of customer type? Is it a harmless symbolic activity or an organizational hallucination that blocks progress?